The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely sophisticated devices that may be found in many different settings. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware (e.g., semiconductors, circuit boards, etc.) and software (e.g., computer programs). As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer hardware higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Computer resource requirements for business and government applications often increase over a time period due to sales or employee growth. Yet, over the same time period, the resource requirements may fluctuate dramatically due to the inevitable peaks and valleys of day-to-day operations or from the increased loads for seasonal, period-end, or special promotions. Thus, the peak resource requirements within a time period may be dramatically more than the valley resource requirements. Hence, in order to be effective, the computerized resources of a business must be sufficient to meet the current fluctuating needs of the business, as well as projected needs due to growth.
When faced with these fluctuating and ever-increasing resource demands, a customer conventionally needs to purchase computing resources capable of accommodating at least peak requirements while planning for future requirements, which are almost certain to be elevated. As a result, customers face the prospect of investing in more computerized resources than are immediately needed in order to accommodate growth and operational peaks and valleys, so that at a given time, the customer may have excess computing capacity, which is a very real cost. Such costs can represent a major, if not preclusive, expenditure for the customer, who may have insufficient capital or time to react to rapid growth and fluctuating requirements.
To address this problem, computing architectures such as the “capacity on demand” design, developed by International Business Machines Corporation of Armonk, N.Y., allow customers to effectively rent or lease resources, e.g., processors, on an as-needed or on-demand basis. More particularly, customers may temporarily enable standby resources that are initially dormant or unused within their machine. Where desired, the standby resources are not included in the up-front, baseline cost of the machine. As such, for a relatively smaller initial capital investment, a customer may activate and deactivate standby or on-demand resources as needed for a fee, which provides the customer with customized access and optimized usage. Thus, customers are effectively renting resources on a temporary basis.
In response to the customer deciding to permanently activate the previously-rented resources, the resource provider may wish to vary the price the customer pays for the permanently-activated resources based on the past rental usage. Thus, e.g., the resource provider may wish to charge the customer less for permanent activation if the customer has already rented the resources for a significant period of time. Hence, a current manual technique bills customers different rates for a permanent activation of a resource based on past rental use. This manual technique has the disadvantage that both the customer and the resource provider or biller are burdened by a manual process, which is imprecise and requires human intervention and associated overhead.
Thus, without a better way to handle the conversion of temporarily-activated resources to permanently-activated resources, customers, resource providers, and resource billers will continue to be burdened by a manual process.